Henry David Thoreau’s quiet wisdom is best exemplified by sayings like, “in allthings, simplicity.” That’s a nice credo to live by — but it may be a hard one to fullyembrace if you’re trying to provide great customer service these days.
After all, if you work in service, you have customers coming at you through a widervariety of channels than ever before. The phone is still No. 1 in terms of use,but when you add SMS, email and chat, you have an exponentially more difficult servicepuzzle to solve.
Social media channels like Twitter and Facebook create another wrinkle: They give customers the ability to air their complaints in public, essentially calling out your company in front of the entire world.
Rewarding Squeaky Wheels
This phenomenon has triggered a variety of responses, as discussions at CRMEvolution in New York demonstrated this week. The way companies look at social media service requests is a great method for reinforcing bad customer behavior, observed the ever-pragmatic Esteban Kolsky,principal of ThinkJar.
Due to the public nature of social media,companies are perhaps too eager to provide answers and assistance topeople complaining on Twitter or Facebook. By hurriedly moving to pacify thesecustomers before their posts are widely seen and may cause greater damage, businessesare training customers to bypass traditional service channels.
Essentially, “the loudest yeller gets the best service,” Kolsky said. And that, we canall agree, is not the best customer behavior to encourage. Sadly, because somany organizations have broken service processes, it’s often the method most likelyto get results.
In the same panel discussion, social media analyst Natalie Petouhoff offered a solution: “Raise the bar on service for everyone.”
That advice is on target — but raising the bar is easier said than done — and that’s partly due to the nature of social media. Businesses have added email, chat andSMS to the phone in a set of incremental moves; these moves were made easier bythe fact that all of these media are generally similar and are based on one-to-oneconversations.
Social is totally different — it’s a one-to-one-to-many conversation.It’s revolutionary, while earlier forms of communication have been evolutionary.
That’s why social media-based service approaches are usually layered over existingservice operations — it’s not yet well understood how to integrate them to providea consistent approach across all channels.
Also, social media is often in the realm of marketing rather than the territory of service, putting yet another layer betweensocial efforts and the core service operations. When that happens, serviceinquiries through some channels invariably result in better outcomes than do others.
Fix the Problem – Don’t Relocate It
What’s the answer? How do you avoid training customers to make social mediatheir first stop when they’re dissatisfied with your products or services? You don’tabandon social media; what you should abandon is the mindset that’s led to thosetraditional one-to-one channels becoming unsatisfying for many customers.
Stopthinking about these service functionalities as a necessary evils and start thinkingabout repairing them with the same mindset you apply to social media servicerequests.
Consider this: You rush to react to negative comments on social media becauseyou’re afraid of the widespread visibility they have and how they could colorpotential customers’ views of your business. But running customers throughineffective service processes has the same result — the likely loss of a customer.
And that customer may well use non-technological social networking methods (i.e.,word of mouth) to complain not just about the initial problem but about your poorresponse to it.
The reach may not be as great as in social media, but the numbersshow many more people attempt to use the telephone and other one-to-one channels– so the numbers of people influenced by the comments of unhappy customers areapproximately equal.
What are customers getting from social media service requests? They’re gettingresponsiveness, quick action and rapid resolution. This is not something thatservice organizations should reserve for people who are eager to go to social media.They’re things that should be provided to every customer in need.
Another factor: The agents tasked with responding to social media often are moreempowered to solve problems than colleagues responding to more traditionalchannels. That guarantees that the public complainers are more satisfied — and thatmore customers take the social media route to try to gain satisfaction.
All businesses would prefer to have service issues handled quietly, effectively andout of the view of social media. If you aren’t willing to invest sufficient thought andresources into making one-to-one channels as effective at resolving service issuesas social media channels, you’re training your customers to air your dirtylaundry in public.
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I was having trouble with my internet/cable service. I spent 2 1/2 hours with a tech who did not reside in America. No help at all. I then spent 2 hours on live chat with another tech. No help either. I could not reach anything but recordings on the phone. After 2 days of futility I posted on their FB page. Within 30 minutes I was phoned by a competent, English speaking rep who off and on spent 3 days solving problems I had not created.
Outsourcing to other countries and non-stop telephones have become so frustrating that sometimes there is no other choice but to post on a social network. The companies have created their own problems and customers are using the only means possible to get the attention of someone who can help.